


Ain't No Soldier

by VeteranKlaus



Series: Bad Things Happen Bingo [5]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Angst, Bad Things Happen Bingo, Blood and Violence, Death, Graphic Description, Homophobia, Period-Typical Homophobia, Slurs, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-05
Updated: 2019-09-05
Packaged: 2020-10-10 15:16:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20530151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VeteranKlaus/pseuds/VeteranKlaus
Summary: Prompt: forced to hurt someone.It was easy to stand and shoot when they were a distant blur, an unnoticeable face, a nobody.





	Ain't No Soldier

It was easy to stand and shoot when they were far away. When Klaus couldn't really see their faces, or if they were moving too fast to really look human when they fell down in a spray of bullets like ragdolls. It was easier to do it then, to feel less guilty. He wouldn't see the fear or the pain in their face, wouldn't have to acknowledge the fact that he had just shot another living human being. They were just targets, simply the enemy, with no names and faces and families and goals and aspirations. 

This, though. This was different.

The village was ablaze. A devouring fire that licked up high into the inky night sky above and destroyed everything in its wake. Houses and schools burned down into ash, bedrooms and memories wiped out with the smell of napalm. Louder than the crackling flames were the screams. Bodies lay strewn around the place like forgotten loose change, dropped and uncared for, with coppery trails around some bodies, others with skin peeling off, blistering with burns, some hardly identifiable as humans. Some too small to be adults.

And they kept going. The flamethrowers sought out any untouched plank of wood, dry plant, human being, and tore them all down in a gust of fire. Lives extinguished without a thought, simply because they were _the enemy. _Klaus caught glimpses of faces filled with terror and he could put them to the faces of people he hadn't seen but killed himself, just from a distance. And then those faces went dead. People's clothes caught on fire and mothers cradled children and tried to run past them, tried to hide in the shadows and sneak off into the trees. Klaus caught the eyes of one woman, and then he turned his head away and said not a word. She was still found anyway. He saw her face covered with blood later.

He hadn't pulled the trigger of his own rifle, and yet his hands had blood on them. He didn't know how, or whose it was. His eyes stung from all the smoke, and had it not been for the cloth tied around his mouth and nose, he surely would have been choking on the ground by now. He had no idea how the victims here could find enough air to scream.

They were just leaving. Throwing glances around the village to ensure no one was alive before they left, though Klaus would hardly say that he was really looking. Then he walked past the burning remains of a house, he glanced at it. He caught a set of wide eyes, and then the person, before Klaus could walk away and leave them be, acted out in fear. They got up and ran, trying to shove past him. He caught their arm out of reflex and they yelled, begging _no no no no no _in Vietnamese before he could try to hush them and hide them again.

"Knew there must have been one of the fuckers still left," chortled Will, and Klaus froze, hand around the woman's bicep. He looked back at her and his stomach sank like a lead balloon. She looked young; extremely, horrifically young. No older than sixteen. She was barefoot and bleeding and her clothes were burnt slightly, and she was shaking. Will nodded his head at Klaus. "Go on, then. Just shoot her and we can go."

Klaus' eyes caught Dave. Dave, who knew that Klaus did not like this. Dave looked guilty and tense, but he couldn't do anything, and Klaus knew it. 

"What are you waitin' for, Klaus?" Insisted William. Klaus' mouth moved silently, words stuck in his throat.

"She's young, sir," he uttered. The man laughed heavily, bitterly.

"Shame she looks like that, then," he snorted. "Just get it over with."

"Sir..." Klaus looked at her. She shook her head, tears running down her face rapidly. She tried to tug her arm free. Klaus feared what would happen to himself if he let her go. 

"It's an order, Hargreeves," Will said, and he lost that sadistically playful tone to his voice. "Shoot her."

"She's just a kid, sir," insisted Klaus. 

"Kill her, Hargreeves! Or are you disobeying a direct order right now?" Klaus found no words to respond with. "Johnson, take her."

"She's just a kid!" Klaus all but yelped as Johnson stepped forwards. He grabbed the girl's arms, taking her from Klaus' grasp. She kicked out, trying uselessly to get out of his grasp. William walked up to Klaus with large, lazy strides, and forcefully clapped a hand onto his shoulder. He leaned close, reeking of smoke.

"You're gonna shoot her, Hargreeves," he said, voice low, warning. 

The girl was tiny. Surely a foot or more shorter than Klaus, with a thin frame and her eyes screwed shut, her chest heaving as she sobbed. He wondered if her family was still alive, hiding somewhere. By the look on her face and the decimated village, Klaus didn't think so. 

"Shoot. Her. _Do it, Hargreeves_!" The man bellowed. The rifle in his hands had never felt so heavy. He couldn't. "What kind of man are you?" He sneered. "What kind of sissy fag did they send me?" His head swung side to side in disgust and Klaus felt his insides recoil. 

"She's a child. She's harmless, sir," Klaus uttered. Something hard hit his face - part of a rifle, he realised - hard enough that he fell to his knees and clutched his bloody nose, rifle clattering out of his hands. 

"Sir," began Dave, his voice rough, but a glare from their superior held him in place. 

"We ain't living 'till you kill her," Will stated, watching Klaus wipe his bloody nose on the back of his hand, then pick his rifle up and stand up. "This war isn't waiting for you to grow a backbone, boy."

No, Klaus thought. It wasn't. And Klaus wasn't supposed to be here. He wasn't supposed to be alive yet. He had been here for two months, and often his thoughts turned to leaving. But something - someone - kept him here. 

It didn't make the bad things any easier to deal with, whether Dave was by his side or not. He still saw corpses littered around the place, still saw dead children, burnt bodies, heard echoing screams. Still waded through fields and struggled to keep his gun clean and when each mine or bomb that went off he feared it would be the last thing he heard. 

Will lifted Klaus' hands up, then clapped him on the back. "Do it, Hargreeves! _Do it_!"

She looked so scared. She kept begging, looking directly at Klaus, sobbing and shaking. Klaus closed his eyes and pulled the trigger.

He heard her body thud lifelessly to the floor. Her blood sprayed hot across his face and arms. He recoiled and almost tripped over her arm, stretched out across the ground. Her eyes were open and lifeless, blood pooling from the side of her head. Klaus clamped a red-splattered hand over his mouth and looked away from her body, sprawled at his feet, covered in soot and dirt and blood. Her skull fell apart around the bullet, caving in around it, and Klaus gagged. 

Will clapped him on the back. "We'll make a soldier out of you yet," he said, and then, just like that, he turned around, whistled, and they all began to leave the destruction behind. The village was still on fire, roaring around them, and Klaus couldn't look away from the poor girl by his feet. By the time they reached camp, she'd be a ghost, and she'd be following him for eternity with her blown out skull and her crying, reminding him that he was a murderer, a monster, who killed a child who would have led a successful life.

He clutched his rifle and marched and grit his teeth against the tears he had no right to shed.


End file.
